BOOKISH
This closed universe has no room for Jewish women who fall outside the bounds of those roles. Alluring Jewish women—the orientalist belles Juives of classic French literature—don’t exist, nor are they likely to, as the nebbish is Jewish himself. A woman’s Jewishness could not, by definition, strike him as exotic. And yet Jewish women are also people, with subjectivity and every- thing. Desires, even. Most often, for the opposite sex. We emerged from the same bowl of matzah ball soup as did our male counterparts, with the same mannerisms. But what’s legible in a male romantic lead as unconven- tional charm does not quite carry over where female ones are concerned.
than go to therapy? Not so the nebbish! His analyst was on speed dial. In the last half-century, ‘How did the schlub get the goddess?’ went from an aberration to an archetypical rom- com plot. Thanks to Allen, there’s no expectation that a male romantic lead be a chiselled superhero played by an actor with broad shoulders, a square jaw, and the vibe of a man able to build his own furniture. Speaking only of on- screen versions (apologies to Philip Roth), one might consider such exam- ples as: When Harry Met Sally (1989); Mad About You (1992–1999); George Costanza meeting fiancée Susan’s parents ( Seinfeld , “The Rye,” 1996) and talking about “shiksappeal” (“The Serenity Now,” 1997). One sees ele- ments in 2007’s Knocked Up (whether a nebbish can be an overly chill stoner: jury’s still out), and more than ele- ments in Larry’s marriage to Cheryl on Curb Your Enthusiasm (2000–2024). Nobody Wants This , a Netflix show that premiered in 2024, maintains the general contours of a nebbish love story, but with a couple of related twists: the rabbi character is written (and, in Adam Brody, cast) as conven- tionally physically desirable, and the story is told from the ‘shiksa’ perspec- tive, rather than that of the nebbish. The nebbish rom-com may have liberated men from restrictive gender and beauty standards. Women, not so much. If anything, the nebbish plot reified many expectations of the non- Jewish women these on-screen neb- bishes fell in love with. He’s the smart one; she’s the pretty one. He has a per- sonality and inner life; her role is to shake her head affectionately at his an- tics. Exactly how assertive or fleshed- out as a character each ‘shiksa’ was would vary, so it’s not that a ‘shiksa’ was a ditz. But she was low-key and easy-going relative to her Jewish-lady counterparts.
The nebbish was a challenge to conventional masculinity. Instead of a strong, silent type, you had men whose lack of muscle they made up for in chattiness.
ENTER: THE NEBBISHETTE
THE NEBBISHETTE —my coinage, though I’m not the first to posit the concept—is a female nebbish. When you consider that the nebbish is a sub- type of effeminate man, it’s not imme- diately obvious how it could apply to a woman. Effeminate, after all, is an old- school derogatory term for a man who is woman-like. But the nebbishette is not simply a woman uninterested in hunting and fishing, or incapable of opening jars. She may be gender- conforming in her physique, but she is a woman inhabiting a male archetype. Slumped-shouldered performative self-loathing might not be the height of conventional masculinity, but it is something associated with certain men. The rom-com nebbish’s defining trait is that, contrary to what one might expect, he gets the girl. There’s no romantic plot for the nebbishette. Rather, her role is that of the woman not so much scorned as ignored. The nebbishette watches Annie Hall and identifies more with Alvy than
The nebbish was in relation, fa- mously, to not only the ‘shiksa’ but also the ‘JAP’ (the high-maintenance young Jewish women who’d make too many demands of him) and the Jewish mother (who wishes he’d stop with the ‘shiksas’ already and marry the ‘JAP’ next door).
42 SUMMER 2026
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